New Year - New Terrain

So - this blog has been dormant for way too long. Who would have thought that juggling a somewhat turbulent life, work and also attempting to write some rulebooks and what not would take a toll on the productivity of a blog, eh?

That's the basic premise for not having updated over the last year. And again, this year I've woved to actually start doing more of a regular update on this here blog of mine. Hopefully I'll actually get it going this time around, seeing as life seems to have stabilized a lot more in the last couple of months. Been rather hectic with the re-write of Fireteam Andromeda, bouts of depression and starting a new job.

Thus, let's kick off the New Blog Year with a few snaps of some terrain that I've just made.

The first offering is a simple rebasing of some fir-trees that I bought at Søstrene Grene, a craft-store/dollar-store combishop that we have here in Denmark. I'm guessing these were intended for christmas decorations, but now they'll be used on a variety of wargame scenes.

And here some hedgerows (two of them need some reflocking tho') that I made using scouring pads (that has finally become available in Denmark!) and then put on cardboard with some flock added. I really like the look of them and I'm considering starting some 15mm WW2 wargaming... possibly using Fireteam Andromeda, but that's another topic for another time - right now I'll just look forward to populate my up and coming field-terrain that I'm planning. I need something that's a bit more lush and habitable rather than my usual desert-ish terrain.

There we are then - I'm back and hopefully I'll keep the pace and actually keep on updating this blog over the year. I'm aiming at at least one post per week, so expect some waffling in the near future.

Another bout of Landscaping

I do apoligize for those who like to keep tabs on my hobby adventures; the last couple of months has been terribly busy and a general slump of all things blogging hit me again - prompting me not to keep up with this journal as the gains still do not outweigh the hassle.

But I have been doing stuff!

I made myself a lot of terrain and I think that my tables are starting to look better and better. Incidently, the last picture shows my progress of updating Fireteam Andromeda as well as some of the other things I've been working on (the camouflaged Rhino for instance).

Thanks for stopping by, I hope to have some more pictures of stuff I've been up to soon enough

And now for a bit of landscaping

Earlier this year, I lamented to Duncan of my inability to be able to build terrain. Not so much that I couldn't make terrain, as such, but that I loathed building it. It would either warp, become too brittle or just look horrible because I never invested the care or time to it. Further - the materials I used always ended up looking just like that - the materials used!

So, when Duncan handed me a couple of imported cork-tiles and said: "See if this helps!" I was hesitant to say the least. Would it really make such a difference for me, after all of these years with failed attempt after failed attempt of being able to build anything remotely stable and straight?

The end-result in all its glory!

It certainly seemed that I could! Well, at the very least I could build something that looked the part - if you look closely then everything is rather crooked, bent or just out of scale. But I've got to say that consider me a cork-vert (heh-heh); this material is brilliant and I keep getting new ideas for stuff to make! Unfortunately, as astute readers might have noticed, then it's imported meaning that my supply might dry up soon - and Duncan seems to have forgotten his supplier or is just unwilling to tell me of his secret stash of this wonder material.

Orcs for scale; they seem to be having a hoot!

But, now that it has been built and put into the context of a battle (which I unfortunately forgot to take any pictures of) I've since then realized that I didn't really mind that it was crooked. Sure, it didn't exactly look like something the populace would have built (I'm pretty sure they would have hired a competent architecht instead) but I was in the need of a borderpost, so I built a borderpost! And it felt good to just do something, knowing full well that it wouldn't rank up there with the 'Eavy Metal terrain builders out there, something that has always kept me from even attempting to do it myself.

Oh, while I was at it I also painted up some camping stuff:

Tents and fireplace by Renedra/Perry Miniatures, the Orcs wouldn't bother leaving their fort for posing as scale miniatures

Now I need to build myself a couple of stonehuts, a small farmstead, a keep and all manner of stuff for fantasy wargaming. Kinda weird finding myself in this position after all these years of being a die-hard science-fiction wargamer. Ah well, let's ride this strange wave and see where we end up!

Second Rosetta Playtest and Making a Playing Mat

There is, unfortunately, only a single picture of yesterdays fight, but it sums it up rather well - the Undead were soundly beaten by a throng of do-gooders as they were about to pilfer a local bastion.

While there are no photos (too blurred, too dark) I can tell you that having this second playtest of Rosetta has reinvigorated me to no end and the science fiction edition of Rosetta is being typed up in a fury of keystrokes at this very moment! ... I mean, when I'm not typing up this here blog post that is.

To those who are wondering, then we managed to fix the close combat issue - it will still end up as a bit of a scrum as that is hard to avoid when playing fantasy battles with no other objective than thumping each others skulls in, but it is a scrum with a lot of finesse and style! Combats are not a completely static affair and units will fall back, lick their wounds and then rejoin the fray - or, if needed be, run for the hills!

We also changed some of the mecanics in regards to having fewer units than the opponent, opting to have a simple little "Pass" rule for the side with the fewer units. It serves the purpose of allowing the side with fewer units to wait it out - if they wish - and see what the opponent does. Let's see how it'll work out in a science fiction setting next time around.

Oh, and I'll try and bring a 15mm science fiction game with me to Horisont V, watch this blog for further updates on that project! Why? Well, because I want to help them out and because today I created...

This!

What you see here is a gaming mat made as per Tobi's Tutorial. For the danes out there, you can follow his tutorial to a tee, just like me - except for the fact that I bought some sort of fabric called "Børstet Halvpanama" rather than Canvas or Calico as I had read elsewhere on the web. It does the job, was decently priced and came in a delicious dark brown colour, which meant that I had to even less colouring - huzzah!

Now to see how long the static grass that I applied to it will last. And to find myself a slightly darker brown, some static grass with a deeper hue and then have a god at creating a full on forest mat rather than this partly mediterranian foresty thing I have created here. After all, this was more of a proof of concept than anything else.

Terrain Boards - Building better worlds, on the cheap!

So as it was, I had recently embarked on a grand quest to create myself a whole host of new modular gaming boards, after having played with the same three boards (beautifully crafted by a good friend of mine, Bjarne) for over two years. And, well, I was getting a bit tired of having to set all of my games in the same desert area, with the same fixed areas of rough ground, slopes, wadis and what not.

As I live in a two-room apartment (which thankfully includes a small basement for storage!) I'm forced by circumstance to always consider how much space any of my terrain projects ends up taking. Which is why I went the modular route; the individual plates are easily stowed away until they're needed and I can create multiple set ups without taking up more space!

However, I also wanted to make modular terrain board-tiles that I could easily expand upon in the future, without having too much hassle in doing so. And remember the part about the two-room apartment? Well, this becomes important now as I also need to take into account that I have no work area, except for my living room. So no power-tools, no band saws, and thus ruling out the most commonly available construction material - wood!

Behold! The future is here!

As you can see, I then picked up a couple of these babies; having been inspired by Rodney Smith's Watch It Played videos on YouTube wherein he demonstrated the board that he had bought from TheTerrainGuy.com. First off, I had a quick look at just such a board. But the cost was just out of my league; especially when you consider shipping & taxes which could easily run up to double the amount! So, while I'm not saying it's too expensive, it is definitely out of my league.

But, wait! What's this?! Locals on a board games group over on Facebook were more than helpful to spot the very same tiles, for cheap and available at a local shop! So, off I went to immediately purchase eight 2' by 2' tiles that would interlock beautifully!

As with all experiments, I made a few initial errors on these boards. They are made from some form of foam-ish structure which makes them flexible (part of the reason as to why I wanted these boards in the first place) but this also becomes problematic when using the tested and true wargamer method of smothering the boards with PVA and throw some sand at them (or lightly sprinkle, whichever you prefer). So, that is exactly what I did, with an end result of the boards cracking up whenever they were ever so slightly bent, thus ruining the elasticiy that I wanted to get out of these boards in the first place!

But when I realized that the jig was up, I had already made the first four tiles, leaving me with little other option than to simply soldier on and keep at it. After all, the paint would hide the worst of these cracks, and as soon as I was able to buy some more static grass (as is typical, when I finally need the stuff for terrain, then I've run out!) that it would hide the rest. But I had some edges lying about the place...

On the edge!

Aha! I tried out the New Wave Terrain method of applying acryllic caulk  mixed up with the tiniest bit of water and some black paint, all over these boards and then sprinkle it with sand before it dried. And it worked! Perfectly I might add! It dried up just as fast as PVA (well, almost, anyway); the sand stuck to the caulk even better than before and best of all - it retained its flexibility! (huzzah!)

Just a bit of showcasing how the terrain boards look. The puzzle effect itself isn't too noticeable, but I'd prefer to hide in on future project tiles!

So there I am; I've got myself a new 4' by 4' board to play on (or rather it is 4' and a smidgeon by 4' and a smidgeon) and a gigantic mess in my living room. Ah well, c'et la vie as they say. Incidently, the colors used are my new go to brand of paints; available in Denmark from: CC-Hobby - I buy the big tubs of course. The best part about these paints is that they dry up matt, unlike most other cheap paints on the local market. Highly recommend them and they have some wonderful hues for terrain.

Oh, and I've finally learned how to drybrush after all these years. It turns out that I have been using the wrong brush all along. Or, at least, it was the wrong brush for me. After I saw Wargaming For Fun's video series on how to make your own modular terrain board, I had to try out his method of drybrushing instead; a big soft brush, a ceramic tile (or, well, I used some aluminium packaging, but hey!) and then gave it a go. It worked beautfiully! Well, it worked a whole lot better than my previous terrain tile attempts at drybrushing, so, cheers and thanks for that WargamingForFun!

My new best friend!

Cork City - Paint & Putty, Oh My!

So, I had myself a complete suburbian settlement on my hands, but it look a bit too much like raw MDF (what a surprise!) and who wants to live in houses made of MDF, eh? Thus I embarked on a grand adventure of Putty & Paint to bring some more patina to the houses of Cork City!

The MadMechaGuy houses are still brilliant bang for your buck, but like all MDF-cut stuff, with interconnectors, these houses suffered from too much of a "model kit" look, once assembled. Undaunted, I gave it no nevermind until I had undercoated the first building and decided, that, well, it still had that look.

This meant that I now had to experiment (yay!) with an easy method on how to hide these connectors and turn the MDF look into more of a concrete look - suited for suburban housing. My first call to port was Acryllic Paste that I bought on the cheap at a local store called Søstrene Grene (The Sisters Grene) for around £3.

Now, while it did work, to an extend, it wasn't exactly easy to apply and the drying times are horrendeous (for a member of Generation X-Y anyway). Still, as an added bonus I now have an easy-to-use plaster-like material for my houses!

So, next up I tried to block off the corner with pieces of card to hide the joins. While this worked beautifully, I would like to remind my dear readers that cutting, drawing and gluing anything resembling a straight line just doesn't work for me. At all. So, it worked out okay, but it will become too much hassle for me in the long run.

Another experiment, was to puchase something called plastictree from a local hardware shop. This increased the budget by £5, and so far I'm not entirely convinced. It's hard to get out of the tube and even harder to apply - but it looks like mud (or anything but wood really), so that's a bonus!

I then tried the Liquid Green Stuff method, courtesy of Games Workshop and hideously overpriced, as per their standard. However, as far as I can tell, then this stuff is actually the best of the methods I've tried out for now in regards to ease of appliance, drying time and overall effect. I will test out some Acryllic Gel instead in a near future to see if it'll work better.

Unless, of course, I just decide to just paint them all up nice'n'proper and ignore these seams in the future. I am, after all, more interested in quick and easy fixes rather than complete and complex modelling projects, akin to dollhouses. After all, I didn't bother with the interiors of these buildings for a reason!

Cork City - Sci-Fi Suburbia

Having always (just ask my Math teachers in 5th grade) been an utter idiot at drawing, cutting or sawing anything in a straight line has naturally posed some limitations for me when it came to constructing wargaming terrain over the years. Give me any organic shape, a lot of random sizes and we're good to go! But ask me to build a small wall, at a ninety degree angle and watch me flee in terror! Try as I might, I have therefore avoided building any sort of city layout for my miniature forays.

That is until I recently stumbled upon Mad Mecha Guy's offerings of lasercut MDF buildings for 15mm science fiction games. As you may gather, these buildings look the business! And they won't put you out of business either! For me, being the thrift-gamer that I am, most other resin (or other materials) buildings in the same scale have always been just beyond my price-range; at least for the amount of houses that I envisioned for my near-future/sci-fi cityscape.

So I ordered up some through a, somewhat, archaic method of emailing my order, reviewing my order and having a nice chit-chat about my order with Joseph, the proprietor and designer - being along the whole way from start to finish. Not only was the conversation super friendly and easy to follow, the shipping itself was speedy as well! So, roughly a week later, shipping from UK to DK, I had my very first parcel of MDF buildings in hand.

A word of caution to those who haven't worked with laser-cut MDF; this stuff reeks of soot! Take heed!

This was then how I recieved my initial parcel; within there were 6 x Two Storey buildings, 5 x One Storey Shopbuildings and 2 x Large Shopping Centres; all of which for the small sum of £24. Now, it may not look like much in the picture above, but...

It definately does the part! For £24(!) I now have a 2' by 2' city center. Or, well, at the very least a surburbian hell-hole, worthy of any firefights. I'm hoping to get them painted as soon as possible; my mate Thorbjørn will join up for a quick test of my Rosetta Skirmish System in 15mm; we're going to pit some X-Com look alikes vs. some Green Men from outer space!

Well... best get painting! And yes, I will show off all of Cork City as I progress. And I will do a post about why it's called Cork City in the first place. Stay tuned!